


The White Queen And The Key

by Radar_One



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Femslash February, Pining, Revenge, Secret Crush, bosslove, strangeboss, you could be the king but watch the queens conquer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 15:19:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6084654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radar_One/pseuds/Radar_One
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thatkindoffangirl, here and on tumblr, wrote:</p>
<p>"Hear me out: AU in which Snake doesn’t manage to kill the Boss and dies in her place. For failing to accomplish her mission the philosophers kill Ocelot. The Boss gets branded a war criminal. She gets in contact with Strangelove who is the only one who believes in her innocence and they put together a organization dedicated to destroying all the remnants of the philosophers. Reboot MGS like this."</p>
<p>And I liked that idea so much I had to write it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The White Queen And The Key

She almost screams when she sees a figure in the corner of her lab.

(...Well, no she doesn't; she's never been much for screaming at anything, not even when she was a girl, and it's not the dark figure she sees first, actually; (she has never been able to not categorise her thoughts like this; it's a gift and a curse, both together; there can be no binary) her eye is drawn at first to the crumpled white shape lying, discarded, in one corner; what she would later come to recognize as a sneaking suit, a prototype, lying in the corner like a shed skin. Her eye then tracks movement; she follows it to the corner- a flash of teeth, blonde hair, cream skin; she's biting the end off a length of crepe bandage, the incisor forward, flashing. She pauses, in her work. Looks up. The end of the bandage still dangles, comically, from her lip, before she winds the end slowly, neatly, to the elbow of her right arm.  

"I apologise, Doctor. I seem to keep interrupting you at the worst times."  

It's like seeing a ghost.

* * *

 

 

_Her voice feels odd and thick in her throat. So much time spent shouting._

_"P_ _lease call me Eliza, Doctor. It means 'Joy'."_

_It's odd to actually speak at a normal level; it feels like it comes out at a growl._

_"Oh. Oh!" She was at least cognizant enough of what codenames- and their absence- meant._

_"Then you should call me Strangelove, not 'Doctor'. It means, ah, strange, ah- love."_

* * *

 

"You're alive," she says simply.

It hurts, a little, a remembered twinge; because she has said these exact words to the same face so many times before; and every time, every time, it had hurt.

(And, well, no to be _exactly_ accurate. Not the same face, not exactly; because the first time she had been freshly returned from Vladivostok, where the women had dark hair; her face had been framed in dyed black, not blonde (and a thin gash above her temple); the second time she had been jumping off the bed of a cargo truck, laughing, triumphant, camouflage makeup smeared across the bridge of her nose; the prisoners she brought in _(Seven men! Singlehanded?)_ had not shared her good humour; and the third time-  

_Mercury Lady_ , they called her; Mercury, the god of thieves, and crossroads, boundaries, daggers, travel ( _space, the final frontier_ ); and- ahem- "little sillies, who are not sure what they are yet" (she had treasured that book, as a girl) (there can be no binary); Mercury is the two-faced god.

They called her Mercury Lady, and half of her face, her poor _face_ -)   

 

* * *

 

 

 " _That's not your_ name _, Doctor. Strangelove, I mean."_

_"Well. I-" She gives a thin smile, this woman. "My name is- hardly important."_

 

* * *

 

"Just." There no trace of humour in the smile; she tugs at the laces of her boots. They're at least a size too big; she's wearing a maintenance uniform that must have been pulled out of the depths of an anonymous locker somewhere.

"But the reports from Washington said-"

"Lies."

Her desk is littered with reports. Some on thin file paper from the archives, some still thick with black censors' bars. Nevertheless, she believes this word; from this face, in this moment.

(She would have believed anyway.)

  

* * *

 

 

_"I don't think so."_

_Sunlight is glinting off the launchpad assembly; she knew the one called Strangelove would come out to watch it. She can be seen, most days in this spot; at a reserved distance, true, in the shade provided by the edge of the hangar, but inclined forward; she aches for the launch, this woman, as much as she herself does._

_"Your work has been pivotal on this project. There's a good chance your name will go down in history."_

_"Ha. If it goes well." it's grudging, but she smiles, thinly._

_"I don't doubt it will. So, what will they call you?"_

_This causes the strange, silver-haired woman to hesitate. The ice breaks, if for a second._

_"I'll- tell you when you come back." She smiles wide now. "How about that?"_

 

* * *

 

 

"My son is dead."

She feels the cold sting in her chest as though it were the Boss'; as though she shares a chest, a beating heart, with the woman opposite.

"Oh, I am- oh, no. Adam, wasn't it?" She feels the heat rising in her face; she's already getting it wrong. "Sorry, I- you rarely talked about him. Your son."

Her eyes are on the floor now; they take in a sight a thousand miles away.

"I fought as long as I could."

"I'm sure you did," she says, helplessly.

She won't look up.

"It still wasn't enough."

 

* * *

 

 

_“Ada. You must call me Ada.”_

_It’s one of the very few things she remembers, following the capsule’s landing (if what happened could be_ called _a landing, and not an unmitigated disaster); the pressure of a hand on her chest, and a voice; soft, helpless; more broken than that voice had any right to be._

 

* * *

 

 

“I want to find the men who killed him.” She says evenly- doing who-knows-what with her gun- “and I want them to _burn_.”   

It sounds like a prediction, not a hope.

She feels hopeless; it’s like being borne along on a tide, looking at this woman; the hate radiates off her. With every second she is alive there is the clang of heavy machinery, as she takes the hate, hammers it into something stronger than steel, harder than diamond.

And-

More brittle-

(The Mercury capsule came back burned, rackety at the seams; she had wanted to fight her way into the medical ward, throw herself over the sheeted body like Frankenstein threw himself over the monster on his slab.

But that wouldn’t have been _practical_.

(God, just once she wished she didn’t have to be _practical_.))

She has pulled back the- the _sliding section_ on the top of her gun. Now, it ratchets back.

"And now I have to get out of here."

"Oh, no- so soon? I assure you-"

It's absurd- she hears her mother's voice, there, asking someone if they won't stay for one more cup of tea- but there's still that flutter of panic in her chest, where ten years ago, a decade (yesterday) she had said _I'm afraid the project is untenable with the subject in her current state-_

"But I can't go back to America. And the USSR will be off-limits for at least four years. Please, Doctor, I beg you- as one mother to another.”

She holds out one gloved hand; imploring.

“Help me."

 

* * *

 

 

_“I'm afraid the project is untenable with the subject in her current state-“_

_She heard it faintly; through the thick wadding of the bandages._

_She had tried to rise, to roar; sensation was rushing back, and it hurt, but more than that she wants to prophesy on the nature of what she had seen; the radiation and its consequences, she can handle; but the image. The still blue of the planet tears at her mind yet._

_(A hand, medicinal and unfeeling, on her chest; a nurse adjusts the clik-clik-clik that she has come to associate with relief from the pain.)_

_Then a second hand; smaller this time; it smooths at the wraps that criss-cross her chest. Not a soldier’s hand, and not a doctor’s either; the nails fuss at the edge, as though the owner is fundamentally unsettled by them; as though to dig her out._

_The pressure increases. A voice to her ear; marred and muffled, but clear, sharp in diction._

_“Quiet, you bloody fool. I’m trying to save your life.”_

 

* * *

 

 

 

The faintest of noises outside.

...It would be a mistake to say she _froze_. Prey freezes. Predators _wait_.

She was waiting now. The barrel of a sidearm (where on earth had she gotten it? Where had she produced it from?) was held along her jaw; tense; ready.

She felt the helplessness then; she was not a hunter, never would be; not like this woman. The coil and pressure and the wait for the final pounce was not in her like it was, here, woven into this woman. 

There was a tap, a faint scuffle, as of large men in heavy boots trying to be quiet.

 

* * *

 

 

_She held her breath._

 

* * *

 

 

She holds her breath.

…

The noise outside passed by.

She breathed out, and was faintly surprised by the hiss, loud in the still air of the lab. The Boss glanced at her, eyes sharp.

“We’ll have to get out of here.”

(She was surprised-

Well, no, the whole situation was _surprising_ , but she had shocked herself, there; because the words lined up behind her teeth had been _There’s an airport ten miles down the road_ , not _I have to collect_ or _let me just_ or any variation on _we must stop_. How willing she had been, to throw her entire life away? How quickly had she been able to dismiss everything that she had built up, painstakingly, against grievous competition?

To follow this woman, the _Mercury Lady_ , who came back from space in a different shape- _Voyevada_ , the Russians in the lab had called her, “the Female Knight”. This woman, not born but _made_ noble, washed in a sea of blood and turned on those strange tides. Lady of War.   

The whole situation is surprising; but she is still surprised by the lack of binary. The nature of her answer, the simplicity.

Everything.

She’d trade everything away to follow.)

A hand wraps around her upper arm. She can feel a warm presence at her back. Outside, the thin, rising noise; an alarm begins to wail.

The Boss tenses. She moves, like a shadow, towards the door.

(It is her curse to be practical, perhaps. She gathers what she can from her desk- money, ID card, lab keys. The little picture of Hal is folded into her pocket. The second framed photo she can-

probably afford to leave.)

A hand swings back, instinctively grasps at her forearm. Snake formation- the same thing the young soldiers try out in the courtyard. I might be a soldier now, she thinks, giddily. Or- well. Military personnel, at least.

A voice from the darkness- the piercing blue of the eyes, peering out. The courtyard is alive with lights, now.  

"Stay alert. Don't make any unnecessary noise. Try to keep up. And follow me, as closely as you can."

"Of course I will," she said; her hand was thin, bloodless, but she gripped the thick material of her sleeve like a drowning man grasps at a rope.

"Of course," she said, breathlessly.

**Author's Note:**

> All credit on the idea goes to Thatkindoffangirl
> 
> (Also Happy Femslash February :D u guys)


End file.
